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Assisting the Dark Scar
We travelled to the Dark Scar to build relations with the clan. The journey was largely uneventful - suspiciously so. On the last night of our travels, we were ambushed in our sleep by two bearded devils and several archers built of wood (possibly golems of some kind?). We dealt with the threat just before the arrival of a party of Dark Scar orcs, who brought us to the town. There we met with Karrosh, with whom we are in good standing, and Rimesh, with whom we are in very poor standing after almost completely destroying his temple of Yurtrus, orc god of death and disease. In an attempt to atone for our mistake, we offered to help around town. We spent the first day farming, helping collect the harvest - it went fine for most of the day, until the evening, when we noticed tremors in the ground as we unloaded our turnip carts. Several Ankheg, acid-spitting giant insects, burst from the ground, burying the orcish farmer. We fought them off, Stacy and Izzy both coming close to death at times, and slew them. We then dug up the poor farmer, who paid us for our help. The next day, we met the town alchemist, who asked us to travel to a nearby cave and collect some rare herbs. We were warned that there was something dangerous slumbering in the cave that we must be wary of. We reached the cave, accompanied by a couple orc guards who elected to camp outside the cave while we collected the herbs. Although the party attempted to stealth through the cave, Valvère unfortunately kicked a stone into the waters in the middle of the cavern. A voice appeared in her head, claiming to be an elf trapped deep in the pool, and attempted to take control of her mind. It then branches out to communicate with the whole party, whereupon we noticed some suspicious movement - and EYES - in the water. The voice broke down into uncontrolled sobbing, and Val rushed into the bowels of the cave to try and grab the herbs as quickly as possible. She collected two plants before being jumped from the water by an Aboleth. Fortunately, it did not strike her - unfortunately, it managed to take control of Stacy, who began to swim towards the pit in the reservoir where the crying was coming from. The aboleth swam towards the others and attacked them. While the main party bravely assaulted the monster, Val performed a risky maneuver to see what was at the bottom of the whirlpool/pit. There was, indeed, an elven child, 50 feet down. She returned to shore. Meanwhile, Stacy reached the edge of the pit, and plunged straight down it, injuring herself greatly with the fall. The aboleth, seeing this and considering the grave injuries it had suffered, laughed cruelly and followed her down. Resourcefully, Eris and Izzy used their rope anchored to Eris’ Immovable Rod to create a rope which they tied to Valvere - but not before the boy elf scrambled up the rope and sprinted to the mouth of the cave. Val attempted to stop him with Hold Person, but to no effect. She dropped down the pit, grabbed Stacy, and was pulled out by the rope almost single-handedly by the surprisingly muscular Hayama. They swam to the shore, where they recuperated, gathered the last of the herbs, and cried collectively. They deduced from visual evidence that the boy was some sort of Vampire - a large part of the evidence being that, upon leaving the cave, they found the orc guards dead and utteraly decimated. The party travelled back to the Dark Scar, where they learned that the boy vampire was named Jason, and his family had resided originally with the tribe, before the orcs discovered their dark secret of Vampirism and exiled the boy into his subterranean gaol - from which he has now been released. We get the impression that we have inadvertently unleashed a GREAT evil, more concerning even than the plague of devils in the forest, and the party pledged to aid the orcs in their efforts to hunt him down. The orcs did not seem to blame the party for we did not know he was there and they failed to warn us. They asked us to clear the vampire-elves’ old hut of their possessions, and told us we could keep whatever we found. The party divided their accumulated wealth and sombrely returned to the Forgotten Library, and thereon to Krakenfall